British Aircraft Carriers 1939-45

50 Pages·2010·5.27 MB·English

by  Angus Konstam

BRITISH AIRCRAFT
CARRIERS 1939–45
ANGUS KONSTAM ILLUSTRATED BY TONY BRYAN
NEW VANGUARD • 168
BRITISH AIRCRAFT
CARRIERS 1939 –45
ANGUS KONSTAM ILLUSTRATED BY TONY BRYAN
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 4
THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRITAIN’S CARRIER FLEET 5
The Carriers of the Great War
Interwar Developments
HMS Ark Royal
The Illustrious and Implacable Classes
Light Fleet Carriers
OPERATIONS 27
Flight-Deck Operations
Service History 1939–45
CARRIER SPECIFICATIONS 39
HMS Furious
HMS Argus
HMS Eagle
HMS Hermes
Courageous Class
HMSArk Royal
Illustrious Class
HMS Indomitable
Implacable Class
HMS Unicorn
Colossus Class
BIBLIOGRAPHY 47
INDEX 48
BRITISH AIRCRAFT CARRIERS
193945
INTRODUCTION
At the start of the 20th century the Royal Navy was the most powerful naval
force in the world. It was in Great Britain’s interests to maintain the naval
status quo, but to achieve this the Lords of the Admiralty had to be innovative
rather than conservative. This was a time of great technological advance, and
the launch of the battleship HMS Dreadnought (1906) demonstrated this
desire to embrace the latest developments, even if this rendered much of the
existing battlefleet obsolete.
HMS Victorious, one of the
Illustrious Class of British fleet
carriers – the vessels that
formed the backbone of the
Royal Navy’s carrier force
during the Second World War.
She first saw action during the
pursuit of the German
battleship Bismarck.
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At the same time as dreadnought battleships were being built, the Royal
Navy was also experimenting with both submarines and aircraft. Airships
were commissioned, but these never proved particularly practical, despite
the enthusiasm of Germany’s Count Zeppelin for lighter-than-air dirigibles.
Aeroplanes offered greater potential, and during the First World War
(1914–18) British naval aviators pioneered the launch and recovery of
aircraft from the decks of warships.
The first naval aircraft were seaplanes or aircraft which could be launched
but not recovered. By the end of the First World War aircraft were landing on
rudimentary flight decks and the first generation of fully-fledged aircraft
carriers began to enter service. During the interwar years this carrier force
was expanded and the vessels converted to carry larger and more powerful
aircraft, including ones armed with torpedoes. Then, during the last years of
peace in the 1930s, a new generation of British aircraft carriers began to
appear – vessels which had been purpose-built for the job. These were
fundamentally different from the vessels produced for the US and Japanese
fleets. They carried fewer aircraft, but they were armoured – a feature which
would prove its worth in action.
During the Second World War, despite the loss of four of their number
these British ‘fleet carriers’ saw service in every theatre, and participated in
some of the most dramatic naval engagements of the war, including the raid
on Taranto, the sinking of the Bismarck, the naval battle for Malta, and the
fighting in the Pacific, where British carriers operating alongside their US
counterparts were able to shrug off damage that would have crippled the latter.
This is the story of these rugged British carriers, and the airmen and aircraft
of the Fleet Air Arm who provided them with their offensive capability.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRITAIN’S CARRIER FLEET
The Carriers of the Great War
A former battlecruiser, HMS
It could be argued that the story of Britain’s aircraft carriers began on a
Furiouswent through various
summer’s day in Orkney, in 1917, when the first-ever deck landing on a
metamorphoses during her
moving warship was attempted. Earlier that year, when the battlecruiser HMS long service career, but by 1939
Furious had been nearing completion the order was given to convert it into she was a fully-fledged aircraft
a hybrid aircraft carrier. A long, gently-sloping flying-off deck was fitted carrier boasting a small newly-
fitted island, having been
forward of the bridge in place of the front gun-turret. This ungainly-looking
completely flush-decked
warship entered service in late June 1917, and just five weeks later would during the 1930s. The vessel
make aviation history. was finally scrapped in 1948.
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HMS Arguswas the first real Until then aircraft had taken off from flying-off decks, but then either
carrier to enter service with the landed on shore or crash-landed in the sea. However, on 2 August 1917, Sqn
Royal Navy, having been
Cdr Edwin Dunning of the Royal Naval Air Service attempted a deck landing.
converted from a liner during
the First World War. By 1939 The experiment took place in Scapa Flow – Britain’s great wartime anchorage
she was being used as a in Orkney, off the north coast of the Scottish mainland. Sqn Cdr Dunning
training carrier; later she manoeuvred his Sopwith Pup around the superstructure of Furious and
served as a convoy escort.
landed his frail little fighter on the flying-off deck, where eager hands rushed
to hold the aircraft down. However, when the pilot tried to repeat the landing,
a tyre burst; he lost control and the aircraft went over the ship’s side, killing
Sqn Cdr Dunning as it hit the water.
Despite this setback it was clear that naval aviation had a future. A few
weeks before Sqn Cdr Dunning’s flight the Admiralty had already taken the
ambitious step of ordering the construction of HMS Hermes, the first British
warship to be designed as an aircraft carrier from the keel up. The final design
was revised in light of the Furiousexperiments, which meant construction was
delayed. The problem in the case of these experiments was with the ship, not
the idea. Furiousreturned to the shipyard to have a flying-on deck mounted
in place of the stern gun-turret, although the bridge and funnel still lay
between the flying-on and flying-off decks. While the conversion was under
way, the Admiralty looked around for other warships to convert into aircraft
carriers. The navy already had several seaplane carriers or vessels fitted with
flying-off platforms. HMS Ben-my-Chree, HMS Vindex, HMS Campania
and HMS Manxman all had flying-off platforms, but were too small to be
converted into proper aircraft carriers. The navy needed larger and more
commodious vessels.
Meanwhile, Hermes was finally laid down at the Armstrong-Whitworth
shipyard on Tyneside in January 1918, but the war ended long before the carrier
was launched, let alone commissioned. Hermesfinally entered service in 1923,
becoming Britain’s only purpose-built aircraft carrier for 15 years. Hermeswas
a strange vessel. In effect she was built on the lines of a light cruiser, and it was
envisaged that the ship would accompany scouting squadrons – it was almost
as if the Admiralty were hoping any future war at sea would be a re-run of the
Battle of Jutland (1916). The result was a fast carrier which was too small to
launch a powerful airstrike against an enemy fleet.
Luckily, the Admiralty had other vessels earmarked for use as carriers. In the
summer of 1917 HMS Arguswas already under construction, having been laid
down as a merchant ship, then converted into a seaplane carrier and finally an
aircraft carrier while still on the stocks at the Beardmore shipyard on the River
Clyde. Before Sqn Cdr Dunning’s flight, it was envisaged that Argus would have
flying-off and flying-on platforms, separated by the superstructure. However,
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the vessel was completed with a 350ft full-length flight deck unobstructed by
any superstructure. Argus was designed to carry Sopwith Cuckoo torpedo-
bombers and Sopwith Camel fighters, and entered service in September 1918.
A much less suitable design was HMS Vindictive, which entered service in
October 1918. She was laid down as a Hawkins Class light cruiser, but
completed as a hybrid carrier. Vindictive still looked like a cruiser, but had a
small flying-off deck fitted in front of the bridge and twin funnels, and a larger
landing-on deck aft. The ship proved highly unsatisfactory. The landing-on
deck was removed in the 1920s, and Vindictive became a hybrid seaplane
carrier, then a training vessel. In all honesty, the ship was such a mess that the
navy never really found a use for it. During the Second World War Vindictive
was used as a repair ship, then was broken up in 1946.
Throughout the war the
effectiveness of the Fleet Air
Arm was limited due to being
equipped with obsolete or
otherwise inadequate aircraft.
Of those pictured here the
Fairey Swordfish and Fairey
Albacore were torpedo-
bombers, the Blackburn
Skua and Fairey Fulmar were
fighter-bombers, and the
Blackburn Roc and Grumman
Martlet were fighters.
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March 1918 saw Furious return from her second conversion, but the
superstructure still proved a problem as the wind turbulence created still made
landing a hazardous business. Furiouswas therefore still used as a ‘one-shot
weapon’ – launching her aircraft without any real hope of recovering them
again. Still, the warship proved her worth. In June two of her Sopwith Camels
shot down a shadowing Zeppelin, and two months later her aircraft bombed
the Zeppelin sheds at Tondern in Belgium. The Grand Fleet now had fighter
cover and a new striking force.
At the war’s end in November 1918 the Royal Navy had three aircraft
carriers in service – Furious, Argus and Vindictive – but of these only Argus
with her unobstructed flight deck allowed almost risk-free landings. The whole
question of flight-deck design had taxed naval designers and experiments
continued. An experimental island was fitted to Argus, and the final designs
of Hermesand Eaglewere changed several times while these ships were still
being built. These and other experiments demonstrated conclusively that the
hybrid carrier was a non-starter.
It was from this point on that the classic design of the aircraft carrier
began to emerge – with a single flight deck extending the length of the vessel,
and either no superstructure at all or a small island located amidships on the
starboard side. Experiments with island superstructures showed that for
ship-handling purposes the starboard-amidships location was the best – the
bridge crew could control the ship when coming into harbour or docking,
yet this location also provided the least possible disruption to airflow over the
flight deck itself.
Like her sister-ship Glorious,
HMS Courageousbegan life as
a First World War battlecruiser Interwar Developments
but was converted into an The 1920s proved a lean time for the Royal Navy. Postwar budget cuts meant
aircraft carrier in the 1920s.
that much of the fleet had to be scrapped and there was little funding available
Courageouswas sunk by a
German U-boat two weeks for new construction. In effect the navy had to make do with what it had.
after the outbreak of war. The naval treaties of the interwar years had much to do with this, as did the
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‘Ten Year Rule’, whereby each year British policymakers asked whether Britain HMS Gloriouscould be
and its Empire would be called upon to fight a major war within the coming distinguished from her
sister-ship Courageousby her
decade. As the answer was usually negative, politicians felt justified in denying
slightly longer flight deck and
funds to the Royal Navy and Fleet Air Arm. plain pole mast. She served
The Washington Naval Treaty, signed in 1922, was designed to allow with the Home Fleet until
the major naval powers to scale back spending and avoid a repeat of the being caught and sunk by
two German battlecruisers
naval arms race that preceded the First World War. A limit was placed on the
off Norway in June 1940.
number of capital ships in each fleet, and the displacement of new warships
was capped at 35,000 tons (imperial). The treaty specifically addressed the
carrier fleets planned by the leading navies. A total of 135,000 tons was
allocated for the British and US navies, while the Japanese carrier fleet was
limited to a total of 81,000 tons. France and Italy were allowed 60,000 tons
apiece. No more than two carriers in any fleet could have a displacement
greater than 27,000 tons, and their total displacement was capped at
32,000 tons – a few thousand tons less than battleships. Consequently, the
United States and Japan began converting battlecruisers into aircraft carriers
– resulting in the USS Lexingtonand IJNS Akagi. The whole idea behind the
battlecruiser – the sacrifice of armour in favour of speed – had been exposed
as a fallacy during the Battle of Jutland, when battlecruisers were used as
battleships and not surprisingly fell short of expectations. The Royal Navy
baulked at the idea of converting the powerful new battlecruisers Repulse,
Renown and Hood, and most of the rest of the old battlecruiser fleet was
being scrapped in accordance with the new treaty limits. That left two smaller
battlecruisers of the Courageous Class, so plans were drawn up to convert
these into fleet carriers.
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